


And Lighthouses on the Shore

by Tesserae



Category: SGA - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-16
Updated: 2006-07-16
Packaged: 2017-10-06 13:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tesserae/pseuds/Tesserae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Look, he said, putting his free hand on Rodney's back, between his shoulder blades, and pointing out to sea with the one holding the shell. The waves were rolling in slowly, stretching out in long even lines as they came in toward the shore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Lighthouses on the Shore

**Author's Note:**

> Challenge prompt: "Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm." - Robert Louis Stevenson

"You want me to go hiking." They were on the mainland with Teyla, taking advantage of a lull in the action to visit the Athosians so Dr. Beckett could check on the children. What they were all doing up at this hour of the morning Rodney wasn't entirely sure. And what it was about sunrises that led people to come up with ideas that involved strenuous physical activity was even more baffling.

"Yes, Rodney, I do."

Hiking. Perhaps they'd all been bitten by something in the night.

"It is a lovely trail, Dr. McKay. It runs near a river and leads to – "  
Rodney cut her off, earning himself a glare from John.

"Hiking."

"- the sea," Teyla continued, her voice firmer than usual. "My people tell me – "

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Oh, _the sea_. Why, I can't remember the last time I saw the sea, living in Atlantis the way we do!"

"It's not just the sea, Rodney. It's got a beach," John murmured, his voice strained under its familiar flat tones. Rodney unrolled his eyes and glanced over at him. About to add something about beaches and skin cancer, he shut his mouth instead.

John Sheppard looked tired, even after a full night's sleep. There were dark circles under his eyes and lines around his mouth, and he'd lost enough weight during the last six months of crisis after crisis that his black t-shirt hung from his shoulders. Rodney couldn't remember the last time they'd watched a movie or sat out on one of the decks, doing nothing more than watching the sun slide down behind the spires of the city. Now John wanted to go to the beach.

Fine. Rodney would go to the beach.

**

"Can we stop for a while? How much longer?"

"Let me guess – you need to pee. You want an ice cream cone. Your brother's on your side of the car. Jesus, Rodney, summer vacation must have been a blast with your family."

"_Sister_, and we never took vacations."

John stopped. "You never took vacations?"

"No. Can we sit down? I think I'm getting a headache from the sun."

"There's isn't any sun, Rodney, we're in the _forest_."

Rodney looked up. They were, in fact, in the forest, but unlike the heavy underbrush they normally fought through, this was more like the long stretches of coast redwoods Rodney remembered from a drive out to Stanford he'd taken some years earlier: enormously tall trees shading ferns and patches of giant clover, and little else.

From the smell of the air he thought they must be getting close to the coastline. Teyla was right: it was lovely here. He wondered if John had noticed anything beyond the bare facts of trail and rocks and trees, if he'd noticed how quiet it was. Their footsteps as they walked were muffled by a thick carpet of fine needles, and even the birds, high up in the canopy, were barely audible.

He dropped his pack down onto the ground next to a tree he couldn't have gotten both his and John's arms around. Leaning over, he fished out two power bars and his water bottle, and then kicked at the needles at the foot of the tree before plopping himself down.

John stared at him. "What are you - ? Never mind, I don't want to know."

"Come on, Colonel. Sit down. It's safe – no snakes." He held up the power bars. "I'll flip you for the chocolate one."

"But that means you get to keep the peanut butter one if I win."

"Well, yes. How stupid do I look to you? In fact – " He handed the chocolate bar to John, who unwrapped it and finished it off in three bites.

"Mmm, chocolate," he said, licking at the corner of his mouth, and then reaching up to brush the crumbs off with his thumb. "Thanks, Rodney."

Rodney thought about getting another bar or two out of his pack, just to watch John do that again.

John belched.

Right. Bad idea. Stifling a sigh, Rodney stuffed the power bar wrappers into his pack and yanked at the zipper.

"So," he said brightly. "How much further?"

John leaned his head back against the tree and closed his eyes. "This is why you never took vacations, isn't it?"

**

Two hours later, they walked out of the forest to see the river they'd been following widen out and end abruptly in a spill of boulders at the edge of the sea. On the opposite side of the river the land rose abruptly and then dropped straight into the waves, a sheer wall of dark purple-red rock traversed by vertical cracks and veins of some white mineral that would have been quartz back on Earth. More rocks, jagged and similarly purple, littered the water, churning it into foam for a hundred yards out from the foot of the cliff.

To their right there was a narrow strip of beach that curved around to a fog-shrouded point maybe half a mile away. Rodney squinted out at it for a long moment, wishing for his sunglasses, then ran after John, who was already picking his way down the slope.

Like any beach back on Earth, the high tide line was marked by driftwood and piles of kelp, deep green and long-tendrilled. Stepping over one, John reached down and picked up a translucent golden shell, and held it to his ear.

"Can you hear anything?" Rodney asked, curious.

"What?" John said.

Rodney stuck his tongue out, and John laughed.

"Look," he said, putting his free hand on Rodney's back, between his shoulder blades, and pointing out to sea with the one holding the shell. The waves were rolling in slowly from the direction they were heading, stretching out in long even lines as they came in toward the shore.

"Four foot swells, and look, they're breaking left – well, right if you're on a board."

"That's right – you surf, don't you." He looked up, smiling at the spray glittering in John's hair and on his lashes. John's hand tightened on his shoulder, and Rodney could feel him relaxing into the familiar rhythm of the ocean. The sand might be purple and the seashells all wrong, but from the way John Sheppard lifted his face to the sun, this was a place he recognized.

"I haven't surfed in years, McKay."

"Maybe not. But nobody else cares which way waves go, Colonel."

He leaned into John, enjoying the solid warmth of him, not really noticing that John had shifted his grip on his shoulder and was now stroking his long fingers over the pulse point below Rodney's jaw. When John leaned in and pressed his lips to the same spot, though, Rodney shivered and pulled away.

Blushing furiously, he swung his pack over his shoulder and unzipped it, fumbling around in a vain effort to hide his face.

"Lose something, Rodney?"

What was it the Americans said about the best offense? Rodney folded his arms, lifted his chin, and did his best to gaze _down_ at John. "Did you bring anything other than power bars to eat?" he asked. "I think I might be getting a headache."

John cracked up.

**

Two nearly-ham sandwiches and two more power bars later, John got to his feet.

"Come on, Rodney."

"What?"

"Time for all good little scouts to get back on the trail." He reached a hand down and Rodney grasped it, letting John pull him up. "If we stay here any longer, I'm going to want a nap. And besides, I want to see what that building is."

"Building? What building? Have you been holding out on me?" Rodney lunged for his pack and pulled an energy detector out, turning it on. He snapped his fingers at John.

"Well? Which way?"

John crossed his arms over his tac vest and shook his head. "What do you say?"

"Oh for the love of – give me your binoculars!" Rodney put his hand out and glared at John, who put on a long-suffering expression and pointed toward the headland. Shading his eyes, Rodney squinted into the binoculars, then looked down at his detector.

"Damn. The thing might as well be made of styrofoam for all the energy it's putting out. Still…" He swung his pack over his shoulder, unzipped it, and dropped the sleek little device into it.

Looking at John expectantly, he added, "What? I want to check out the whatever-it-is, and it'll be easier if we walk down by the water – plus, less chance of snakes." He turned and headed off. "Come along now, Colonel!"

"I hate you, you know that, right?" John called after him.

**

"It's a _lighthouse_." John's voice held a note Rodney hadn't heard since they'd discovered the puddlejumper bay. He hurried to catch up and nearly walked into him as he rounded a curve in the trail.

"What do mean, a lighthouse? The Ancients didn't - "

John took him by the shoulders and turned him to his left, then stretched his arm out and pointed. "Oh, yes, they did. Look," he said, his voice soft.

Rodney caught his breath, leaning into John's hands, then looked out toward the end of the point.

At the very edge of the land stood a small tower with a ring of windows at the very top, surmounted by a conical roof of greenish metal. A low octagonal building in the same golden stone stood next to it, and a shallow flight of steps led up to an open doorway in the tower.

It was – possibly – a lighthouse. Built by a group of people who didn't need them, to guide ships they didn't have into a harbor that didn't exist. A lighthouse.

"It can't be a lighthouse." Rodney took out his energy detector again.

"It's a lighthouse."

"It can't be – there's no power source. How can it make light?"

"Rodney, there were lighthouses before there was electricity. You know that."

"Yes, yes, fueled by _whale oil_, Colonel. Have you seen any _whales_ here?" Rodney crossed his arms.

"Well, no, but – "

"Ha! Not a lighthouse, then."

John narrowed his eyes and shot Rodney a look he couldn't interpret. "It's a lighthouse, I'm telling you," he said, stalking off toward it.

Ten minutes of silent walking through the wind and the spray from the waves brought them to the foot of the structure that was possibly (if improbably) a lighthouse. Rodney wiped his face irritably and pushed past John to get into the tower. John walked past him, looked up, and froze.

"Colonel?"

When John didn't respond, Rodney walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. Wordlessly, John pointed toward the roof.

High above them hung a glass dome, its geometric structure recalling the soaring stained glass of Atlantis' gateroom. Sunlight coming in through the tower's clerestory struck rainbows from the few prisms that remained; the rest lay scattered on the floor at their feet and on the large metal cube, silvery gray with corrosion, that sat directly below it.

"John?"

John reached out and brushed a bit of glass off the metal cube. "It's – here, look, the gears would have been inside this thing. Up there – " he pointed up again, smiling hugely, " – that's called a fresnel lens, for focusing the light way out to sea."

"It's – "

" – a lighthouse, yeah," John answered, the "oh, wow, cool" unspoken. "Like Point Reyes, in California. Or Destruction Island, in Washington, or Spectacle Reef, on Lake Superior, or Little Sable Point, on Lake Michigan."

"I was going to say _beautiful_, but - _where_? What are you talking about?"

In response, John smacked his head.

"Lighthouses, you idiot. My grandfather loved lighthouses. And trains, and shipyards, and Ferris wheels. Anything mechanical, pretty much."

"And you – what? Visited these things? Why?"

John ran his hand through his hair and gave Rodney a long look.   
Rodney flushed, shoved his hands back into his pockets and walked away, stopping at the metal staircase that spiraled up toward a platform near the base of the glass dome. He reached out, about to touch it, and then looked more closely at the gray rust that coated its railings. He wondered how long the building had been here, if it was, as its technology seemed to indicate, pre-Ancient. And if so, what kind of metal had they used that would mostly resist corroding for millennia?

Naquadah would, of course, but naquadah corroded to a greenish black, and he didn't think it could be spun out into the delicate cobwebs of the staircase and the – what had Sheppard called it? – the fresnel lens in the tower. Whoever the builders were, they had an excellent grasp of Ancient aesthetics, even if he couldn't quite grasp the point of the function that this particular form was charged with following. And speaking of function, wasn't Sheppard _Air Force_? Why did he know about lighthouses?

"I told you – my grandfather liked this stuff. My mom would drop me off with him every summer, and we'd go … visit engines. And gears – lots of gears."

Damn. He'd obviously spoken out loud.

John kicked at a pile of chain, and then reached down to pick up a section of it. "Hey, look - what's this metal? It's really light."

"Do I look like a blacksmith?" Rodney snapped. "And put that down - it's covered in broken glass."

"Did you really never go on vacation?"

Shit.

"Well, not _never_..." He walked over to the doorway on the other side of the tower, away from Sheppard. He took out his energy detector and fiddled with it, knowing it wouldn't register anything but needing the distraction. "She wanted to, you know? We'd see something on TV and she'd go buy all this _stuff_ \- maps, books, special clothes, insect repellent - even got us vaccinated for something, yellow fever maybe, one year. But then, I don't know, she -"

Sheppard came up behind him and propped his hands on the doorframe, leaning into Rodney and gazing out to sea. Rodney turned his tablet over and stared at the back of it.

"...she could never really _sustain_ it, you know?"

"Sustain what?" John's voice was soft, his breath warm in Rodney's ear.

"The excitement, I think. She'd start thinking about everything that could go wrong, or maybe - I don't know, maybe she figured there was no way it'd ever be good enough." Whatever it had been, Rodney's grasp of the principle of _equal and opposite reaction_ had been immediate and instinctive, and had only been reinforced when he got old enough to develop crushes on his classmates. "In any case, we never went."

"Ouch."

"Yeah."

"So what did you do?"

"When?"

"When you never got to go." Was there more than curiosity in John's voice? Rodney couldn't tell. He walked down the steps, needing to put a little distance between himself and Sheppard.

"I signed up for summer school, Jeannie played tennis. We tried to avoid the whole thing, mainly," he said, waving one hand behind him in what he hoped was a dismissive gesture.

"Is that what you're trying to do now?"

John was behind him again, warm against his back. Rodney caught his breath as desire curled through him. This was _Sheppard_, he reminded himself.

"Is what – _what_?"

John huffed and wrapped one arm across Rodney's chest. Drawing him back, he placed his hand flat on Rodney's stomach, just above his waistband. "I swear, McKay, if your next question is "how", nobody will _ever_ find your body," he whispered, laughter threading through his voice.

Laughter. _Laughter._

Rodney wrenched himself out of John's arms and walked further out onto the point, toward the edge of the cliff. Twenty feet below him, the waves rolled over pale jagged rocks and into tidepools.

"Rodney!"

Breathing hard, wiping sea spray off his face, he turned around.   
"No, _Colonel_, my next question – " he stopped, his hands curling into fists at his sides, " – my next question is _why_."

"The _fuck_? What do you mean, _why_?"

"What do you think I mean? It's a small enough word, Colonel, surely even you - "

He stopped again, unable to look away as resignation settled over John's mobile features. The wind blew into the silence between them, carrying sea spray and the sound of the waves. John shook himself and ran a hand through his hair. Dropping his eyes, he said softly, "Okay," and turned to go.

"Wait…" Rodney crossed the distance between them and put a hand on Sheppard's arm. "_Wait._" His mouth worked for a moment, opening and closing. He could explain this, he knew he could.

John lifted an eyebrow, but didn't move.

"Look. I've never been to the Museum of Science and Industry, in Chicago."

John nodded carefully.

Rodney went on, his voice too high in his own ears, _pushing_, needing John to understand. "It was the one trip I really, really wanted to take. Jeannie, you know, she wanted to go on all the trips, but I just – I just wanted to go to Chicago." John would get it, he would, John was smarter than he was when it came to people, and when he did, Rodney could go back to talking about things _he_ understood.

"And you've never – I'll take you to Chicago, Rodney."

He didn't get it. The disappointment was sharply physical, like it had been when his mother carried the suitcases back up the stairs, the front door unopened, the car never started. Rodney wrapped his arms around his ribs and held on, trying to breathe through it.

When he could speak again, he said, "It's nothing special, I'm sure. Let's just – let's just go back, okay?"

John grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, hard. "Jesus, could you maybe translate that into _physics_ so I can understand what you're talking about – " and Rodney could see his face turn white as he figured it out.

"You think – you think this another non-vacation, don't you? Like this is _casual_ for me." His voice was flat, his mouth thinned with anger. "You think I'm going to leave."

"Well, if the - " he started.

"No, _don't_," John snapped. He stood there, breathing hard, and then slowly, as if dragging each word up from a carefully-hidden place, he asked, "Have you ever known me to walk away from _anything_, McKay?"

He tightened his grip on Rodney's shoulders and Rodney could feel his arms shake with the force of it, as if the only thing anchoring John to the planet was his hold on Rodney McKay. "Answer me!"

But Rodney was cold and wet, and unutterably tired. He wanted to sit down, he wanted another power bar, he wanted to be done with this damned conversation and get back to his lab, he wanted to bridge the chasm that had opened up between him and Sheppard. He wanted to make John smile again, like he did when they saw the old lighthouse works. But he didn't know how to do any of these things. He stared at John's chest, his heart pounding in his ears, not even sure he remembered how to breathe anymore.

John put both his hands on Rodney's face and tilted it up, looking into his eyes. Whatever he saw there – Rodney had no idea what it was – made him relax his grip and start to smile.

"Rodney." He nodded. John continued. "I'm pretty sure this is a bad idea, but - "

He pulled Rodney closer, brushing his lips against Rodney's, once, twice, and again. When Rodney opened his mouth, he found it full of John, breath and lips and tongue, and groaned. John deepened the kiss, pulling Rodney's tongue into his own mouth, running his hands into Rodney's hair and angling his head to open Rodney's mouth even further.

Rodney gasped and put his arms around John's waist, pulling his t-shirt out from his pants and sliding one hand into the curve of John's lower back. John thrust into him – hard, John was _hard_ \- and Rodney broke the kiss, shocked by the pleasure that arced through him.

He closed his eyes and opened them slowly, and looked at John. John smiled at him, brushing a thumb across his lower lip. "Are you - " he rolled his hips into Rodney's, " - good with all this?"

Rodney tightened his hand on John's ass and pulled him closer. John was hard, and it was because of _Rodney_, and sometime soon, he was going to come with John Sheppard's hand on his dick. He was great, never better.

He dropped his head onto John's shoulder. He would never be able to explain why that scared him more than any of the rest of it.

"We never got another dog, either," he said into John's t-shirt.

"I don't even _want_ to know what that means," John replied.

Rodney pulled back and looked at him. The tide had dropped, and with it the wind. In the sunshine, their shadows and that of the lighthouse behind them lengthened on the ground.

John tightened his arms around Rodney's waist and kissed him, wet and sloppy and full of promise. "Rodney?"

"Yes, what?"

"Did you really want another dog?"

"No, I'm really more of a cat person."

"Yeah, that's what I thought," John's voice was thoughtful, then he looked down at Rodney and grinned.

"What now?" Rodney asked.

"Got any more power bars?"

 

END

 

[](http://pics.livejournal.com/tesserae_/pic/00011bcd/)  
The Coquille River lighthouse

 

[](http://pics.livejournal.com/tesserae_/pic/00012f5x/)  
The Fresnel lens

[](http://pics.livejournal.com/tesserae_/pic/000133h0/)  
Point Lobos (near Carmel, California)

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for [](http://community.livejournal.com/stargateanon/profile)[**stargateanon**](http://community.livejournal.com/stargateanon/).
> 
> The pictures below are from [Trek Earth](http://www.trekearth.com), and gave me the visual references for the story.


End file.
